17% more .be in 2008

DNS BE, the official authority that manages .be domain names, has announced that in 2008, the number of .be domain names has achieved a growth that was less fast than in 2007, but nevertheless also that in 2008, 16.7% more .be domain names have been registered compared with the year before. On December 31 2008, there were 859.474 .be domain names – more than double the figure four years ago.

Among all the registered domain names, there were 222.915 brand new names, which boils down to a growth of 15% compared with the year before. Here, we can notice that an increasing number of individuals request their own domain, because the percentage of domains for individuals has grown by 28%, which means more than the general growth that domain names have achieved. The interest that individuals have in domain names can be explained on the one hand by the general integration of Internet and the attention that is given to IT and telecoms in schools, but on the other hand also by the fact that a .be domain name can be registered so easily and fast, at an attractive price.

Are there actually a lot of foreign companies or individuals that register .be domains? According to the most recent information provided by DNS.be, this category represents 30%. The majority of .be domain names are thus in the hands of Belgian companies or individuals, among which there is a major gap between the country's regions: 69% are registered by Flemish, 17% by Walloons and 14% by inhabitants of Brussels.